Goodbye WEligama

We have been here in Weligama for two and a half months now, and the time has come to move on. I have mixed emotions as I suppose I do every time we leave a place. Weligama is a busy town, sandwiched between a bunch of other heavily touristed towns in the surrounding sixty kilometer stretch of coastline. It’s the locals town on the South coast of Sri Lanka, central to everything else down here, central to all the surf, and central for all the fishing industry East of Galle. It is a fishy smelling place (which you get used to), a garbagey place, with quite a lot of plastic and the detritus of a busy industrious people on the main beach (which you do not get used to), and it has been our home, good and bad, for our stay in the South.

We met a bunch of great locals, who I struggle to remember (not to mention pronounce) their names. There were the restaurant owners, the market vendors every Tuesday and Friday, the fishmongers, the surf camp instructors, the local surf rippers we met in the lineups, the tuk tuk drivers that asked us every day if we needed a tuk tuk ride even though they knew we had our own, the adorable couple that ran the little bakery shop with almost nothing in the cases, the security guards that opened the door for you every time, without fail, at the Cargill’s grocery store, and our amazing, talented, and super friendly tuk tuk mechanic that we saw at least once a week. All of these folks, every time we saw them had nothing but kind words and smiles for us, and we had many very pleasant, but very difficult to understand conversations with them.

We met our scruffy little dog that adopted us completely. He was in terrible shape until Tam got him his medicine and we started feeding him more. Then he would sit at the market property waiting for us to come out of our house across the street, rush up all wiggly and happy, and follow us all over town and nearly get run over by danger buses following us across the streets. The poor little guy had three mostly decent legs and one withered Tiny Tim leg on the back, was covered in mange, fleas, and ticks when we met him, but he was our dog (or more likely we were “his people” from day one), and he would fight off any other dog, or pack of dogs that approached us. He was a faithful little guy. We named him scruffy. Its a shame we don’t have any “after” pictures. He turned out to be quite a handsome little guy (for a Sri Lankan dog).

We met some really great folks: Fred, the French businessman and restaurateur with an always entertaining outlook on life, Ellie, his business partner and the sweetest British girl with the best accent, Elana, Freds girlfriend, and the two absolutely refreshingly engaged and pleasant British friends of Ellie’s that I cannot remember for the life of me their names (they also had the best British accents).

Fred has started an escape room business in town here called “The Great Escape”, and we tried both of the rooms and failed miserably at both (we would never escape prison or a museum if it came down to our logic and puzzle solving skills).

This is where I started my fifth career, this time as a Voice-over actor and silent film star. I played the part of Warden Blackwell in the prison escape introduction video (all of 10 seconds on screen), and did the voice-over of the introduction to both rooms. The best part is that Fred runs a Thai food restaurant here, and we traded for Thai food. Best Job ever!

Warden Blackwell has no pants!

And we had friends visit! River and Tyler. We had fun cruising around to different beaches, walking around the fort, looking for waterfalls, and scaring the crap out of Tyler driving the tuk tuk around Sri Lanka! Im not sure Tyler was a big fan of the danger buses here. We did catch some really nice sunsets, though.

We all went to a tea plantation, which turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would. It is a huge industry here, and the process is quite interesting. The plantation also grew and processed cinnamon the traditional way, which is incredibly time-consuming and strenuous. I have a whole new appreciation for the cinnamon that I eat.

Another selfie at another waterfall. Tam makes me do so many selfies! It is kinda cute though…

We did find this crazy cool waterfall north of town. You could walk around behind the falls (while getting properly pummeled by the water) and come out the other side. There was this little local guy there to guide us through and show us which roots to hold onto back there so we didn’t get washed away down the river. The video doesn’t show too much, but I did finally convince Tam, River, and Tyler to come across underneath. It was good adventure, and we ended up at a second swimming hole where you could climb up through a little cave and jump off the rocks into the pool.

I paddled out at the Sion surf break for the first (and only) time a couple days before we left. It was this beautiful stormy day with thunder and lightning all around. I probably shouldn’t have been out there, it was pretty heavy, but the waves were perfect glass, with long, fast head-and-a-half high walls. It was one of the best surf sessions I had in Sri Lanka. This session was followed by great days at Fisherman’s Reef and Mirissa Point as my last sessions. It was such a gift to have my last four or five surf sessions be absolutely perfect: mysteriously uncrowded, and great consistent waves. Perhaps it was a gift from Weligama for me to leave here with a satisfied smile on my face.

Tam finally got to fulfill her dream of traditional stilt fishing in Sri Lanka. There are spots you can get these pictures as tourists, but its a fake: the pole is on the beach and you take the picture to look like you are fishing. That is just not the way we wanted to do it, so we found a local fisherman, paid him three bucks, and got to go out there on these wobbly sticks and fish. And they are wobbly, swaying around while you are trying to hang on.

And, to make it the best experience ever: I caught one! It wasn’t a monster, but it was the perfect size. If it were any bigger it would have pulled the pole over.

Weligama may not have been all sunsets and rainbows, but there were quite a few. I will miss it here. Maybe not the throngs of thonged tourists, and maybe not the smell of open-air fish markets, but, well, ultimately maybe them too. It was a great experience.